


The Wayward Wand

by hechicera



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, BDSM, Bestiality, Bondage, Comedy, Crack, Crossdressing, Erotica, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Heterosexual Sex, Masturbation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rimming, Second War with Voldemort, The Quidditch Pitch: Erotic Couplings, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-27
Updated: 2009-10-24
Packaged: 2018-10-26 12:22:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10786674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hechicera/pseuds/hechicera
Summary: A brothel in Knockturn Alley provides entertainment for our favorite (and some not-so-favorite) characters.





	1. The Potions Bloke

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).
> 
> **Author's notes:**
> 
> This is a very tongue-in-cheek AU fic that takes place at an unspecified time when all the characters are alive and well. I write new characters as they occur to me, and suspect it will always be a WIP.
> 
> Feel free to make requests. The following characters are off limits:
> 
> Any students except for Fred and George, who are of age when they come to visit
> 
> Arthur Weasley (I just don't think he would)
> 
> Dumbledore (do you reeeallly want to be envisioning Dumbledore naked?)
> 
> Voldemort, because I love all my girls and I just wouldn't do that to them. 

  
Author's notes:

> Hey, teachers don't make very much money. A wizard's gotta do what a wizard's gotta do.

* * *

> You could walk the streets of Knockturn Alley all night long and not see the entrance to the Wayward Wand. 
> 
> This was hardly surprising, as it in fact had none. Part of the establishment’s insanely rigorous security was that clients entered it only by Portkey, and then strictly by individual appointment.
> 
> The room into which the tall, black-haired man was thus transported was furnished in red velvet and gilt, and staffed by a taciturn man in a morning suit and white gloves.
> 
> “Your name, sir?” he asked. 
> 
> “Oh, Merlin’s mother’s cunt, Hastings,” the man snapped. “You know perfectly well who I am. You’ve been seeing me once a fortnight for the past twelve years.” He set a squarish dragonhide satchel heavily onto the floor.
> 
> “I’m certain I never remember the identities of any of our clientele, sir,” said the man imperturbably. “Your name?”
> 
> “Snape,” he replied in exasperation. “Severus Snape, you pretentious twat. Now will you do me the kindness of telling your mistress that I’m here?”
> 
> The butler left and reappeared shortly, accompanied by a woman in her fifties who, although still attractive, was beginning to run to fat, and was wearing only slightly less paint than the Sistine Chapel ceiling. 
> 
> “Severus,” she purred. “So good to see you. Do come into my office. Have you brought us anything interesting?”
> 
> He followed her into an office whose utilitarian furnishings presented a sharp contrast to the heavy-handed opulence of the sitting room. Sweeping aside a stack of papers, she cleared a space on a low table for him to open his case.
> 
> “An assortment of lubricants,” he said, removing a dozen vials and placing them on the table. “Various flavors and fragrances, slow you down, speed you up, make your cock vibrate, heating, cooling, the usual thing.”
> 
> “Very nice,” she said, removing the stopper from one of the vials and sniffing it delicately. “And do you have any more of those Petrophallic drops? They’re a real godsend with some of our more . . . elderly clients, especially since the girls can just slip them into the drinks and the old gentlemen haven’t a clue. Makes them think they’ve still got it; tremendously good for business.”
> 
> “Yes, of course,” he said, rummaging in the satchel and handing her a small brown bottle with an eyedropper. Then he brought out two jars, one large and one small. “Depilatory, repilatory.” 
> 
> “I don’t know about that last one,” she said. “The girls hate that. They say it itches like the devil.”
> 
> “Still,” said Snape mildly, “you never know when a particular customer’s tastes may require it.”
> 
> She smiled. She was sure that Snape was completely unaware of the existence of a small parchment file card with his name at the top, which said—among other things—“no shaved twat.”
> 
> “I also have a few new offerings that I think might interest you.” He rummaged in the bag again. “For those occasions when you may not wish for the customer to realize that the woman servicing him has resorted to, shall we say, artificial arousal enhancement, I’ve developed these little beads, which may be inserted up to an hour beforehand, and will provide a lubrication virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.” He held out a half-pint-sized container labeled “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Pussy.”
> 
> She lifted the lid of the container and peered at the tiny translucent spheres. “Very interesting. Anything else?”
> 
> He removed from a pocket of the satchel a pair of blue surgeon's gloves, which he donned with a theatrical snap. “These,” he said, holding up a tiny clear bottle with a long thin nozzle, “are SureFire Detonating Drops. Guaranteed to make any man come within thirty seconds.”
> 
> “Really?” she said, clearly intrigued. “I can see how that would come in very handy.”
> 
> “The clever bit,” said Snape, “is that it is absorbed transcutaneously.”
> 
> “Hence the gloves.”
> 
> “Hence the gloves. Just one drop, applied surreptitiously anywhere on the body—the back, for instance, or the nape of the neck—will have the desired effect within seconds.”
> 
> “I do think, Severus,” she said dryly, “that the client is likely to notice if the girl pauses in her attentions to put on a pair of rubber gloves.”
> 
> “Oh, no,” he said, “there’s the beauty of it. It has no effect on the female whatsoever, so the wh—the girl can just apply it with her bare hand. Here,” he said, taking the cap off the little nozzle, “try it out. Hastings, make yourself useful and come in here a moment, would you?”
> 
> She gave him a look over the tops of her reading glasses. “Severus, as much as you might enjoy making poor Hastings ejaculate in his trousers, I think we can spare ourselves the demonstration.” She held the little bottle up to the light. “No effect on the girl, eh? Well, I suppose under the circumstances that’s just as well. But do you have a companion product that works the same effect on women?”
> 
> He raised his eyebrows. “Really, Zelda,” he said caustically, “do you think that if I had developed a potion that would induce instantaneous orgasm in women, that I would be eking out a supplement to my income cooking up lube after hours in my Potions classroom? Or coming here to get my, er, needs met? Women would be lining up for the privilege of whipping off their clothes in front of me.”
> 
> “I suppose you’re right,” she sighed. “Still, it’s a pity.”
> 
> He cleared his throat. “Speaking of which . . . ”
> 
> “Ah, yes. Would you like me to check and see which of the girls is available?”
> 
> “Actually, Zelda,” he said with studied nonchalance, “I was hoping, given the added value of the new products, that we could, er, revisit the possibility I spoke to you about last month.”
> 
> She wagged a finger in his face. “Severus Snape,” she said, “I am never, ever, going to allow you to spy on my clients. The very idea! I don’t suppose you would like it if I allowed someone to hide in the wardrobe and watch you while you’re at your business with my girls, now would you?”
> 
> “Depends on who it was.”
> 
> She made a little exasperated cluck. “You know, we’ve got the magic lanterns, if you’re so set on watching.”
> 
> “I don’t want some silly fucking picture show. I want to watch the real thing.”
> 
> She paused for a moment. “How about this? Since you did bring a very nice assortment this time, including the new products, I’ll let you have two girls and watch them together. How would that be?”
> 
> He shifted in his seat and crossed his legs with elaborate casualness. “I suppose that would be an acceptable compromise.”
> 
> “Lovely. Just give me a moment and I’ll see who’s free.”
> 
> She left, and Snape returned to the red and gold sitting room, where Hastings was still standing by the door. Apparently the man never sat down.
> 
> “Will you be staying, sir?” he asked.
> 
> “Yes, Hastings, I will be staying. As I always do when I visit this establishment, as you well know.”
> 
> Hastings held out his hand. “Your wand, please, sir.”
> 
> “Oh, Christ on a cracker, man, must we go through this every single time?”
> 
> “House rules, sir. No magic on the premises. Your wand.” His hand remained outstretched, and Snape grudgingly reached into his coat pocket and withdrew his wand and handed it over.
> 
> Zelda returned with two women: a slender Asian, and a more voluptuous redhead whose creamy pale skin was sprinkled with freckles. “Malavi, Amanda,” she said, “this is Severus. I know you’ll look after him.”
> 
> “Thanks for the chance, Miss Zelda,” said Amanda with a little smile. Snape preened ever so slightly; the idea that a girl would be grateful for the chance to suck his cock was a novelty, and pleasing to him. Another artifact of which Severus Snape was unaware was a jar in the kitchenette of the brothel, containing fifty-five Galleons—five for each girl in the House—and bearing a hand-written label, “Fuck the Potions Bloke.”
> 
> Because in the twelve years that Snape had been making fortnightly visits to the Wayward Wand, he had received hundreds of blowjobs and the occasional wank—but no one, ever, had succeeded in getting her cunt around his cock. 


	2. Two Are Better Than One

  
Author's notes:

> Snape and two hookers: what's not to like?

* * *

> A/N:  
> That title's from the Bible. Really, it is. I am going straight to hell.

>   
> Thanks to my wonderful beta and Britpicker, RedSkyAtNight, who not only saves me from Americanisms, but makes great contributions to style, characterization, and plot. Snape-as-voyeur was her idea, for example.
> 
> Thanks also to lulabelle72, my smut goddess.

>  

* * *

>  

  


>   
> For all that he had been coming (so to speak) there for over a decade, Snape’s file card was not very elaborate. On the “Bother” scale he rated only two out of five pricks. These he earned for—in addition to the “no shaved twats” entry—a “generally disagreeable personality,” “no touching of the body,” “doesn’t give a monkey’s whether you get off or not, but really gets his mad up if you fake it,” and “Never tips but will sometimes give free samples.” 
> 
> Under “Preferences” were listed, among others, “Blowjobs (prefers) & handjobs, no fucking,” “Never a prob to get him up,” “Will wank while watching you do same.” The “Yes” box was ticked next to “Filthy talk?” and the words, “cunt,” “whore,” and “fuck” were scribbled in beside it. In the “Dom/Sub” box, “Dom” was circled, although he merited only a “mild” on the scale, and someone had penciled in, “Doesn’t really like to hurt you but likes to think you think he will.” In the blank after “Prem. Ej.?” was written, “Every once in a while but who’s complaining?”
> 
> The most recent addition, at the bottom of the card in Zelda’s loopy schoolgirl hand, was “Wants to watch. Preferably people he knows, esp. LM.”
> 
> Amanda watched as Snape took off his frock coat and waistcoat and hung them on a hook; he then sat in a chair by the bed. She knelt down and untied his shoes and slipped them off, then reached for his shirt buttons, but he grabbed her wrist. “No, you first. The two of you, on the bed. And take that thing off,” he said, gesturing dismissively at Amanda’s corset, a green satin affair with black lace overlay, which she thought suited her coloring and on which she had spent half a week’s pay at Lula’s Lascivious Lingerie.
> 
> He unbuckled his belt, unzipped his trousers, and took his cock in his hand as she slowly unfastened the front hooks of the corset. This was Amanda’s first time with him, and she noticed that his cock was already in a state of anticipatory semi-erection. Never a prob, indeed. 
> 
> Her full, creamy breasts—of which she was justifiably proud—spilled out as she unhooked the corset, and Malavi came up behind her and reached around and took them in her hands, brushing the pink nipples with her thumbs, making them pucker and harden.
> 
> Snape leaned back in the chair and slowly began stroking his now rigid cock. Amanda tossed the corset into his lap, but he swatted it aside, never taking his gaze off the two women. His black eyes were dark with hunger, the head of his cock engorged and purple as his fist moved up and down on the shaft.
> 
> She turned and kissed Malavi’s delicate mouth, her tongue flickering in and out, and slid her hands down the smaller woman’s back, grasping her arse and pulling her up against her. She could hear Snape’s breathing quicken, and she slipped a finger into Malavi’s dripping cunt, brushing across her swollen clit and making her moan with pleasure. Turning away, she stepped over to Snape and wiped the wet finger across his upper lip. “You do like to smell cunt, don’t you?” she whispered in his ear.
> 
> His eyes widened, and he inhaled deeply, pumping his fist faster as the first drops of clear fluid appeared at the end of his cock.
> 
> Amanda reached down and put her hand over his. “Not yet,” she said softly. “We’re just getting started here.”
> 
> Then she crossed back over to the bed, where Malavi lay waiting, her dark skin gleaming under a translucent white babydoll negligee. Amanda unfastened its single button and pushed it to either side, revealing small, perfect breasts topped with dark brown nipples already hard with desire. She licked one gently, then sucked it into her mouth and felt Malavi’s slender body rise beneath her. She bit the nipple gently, and the other woman whimpered and buried her hands in Amanda’s silky red hair. 
> 
> Amanda looked across at Snape and raised her eyebrows in a question.
> 
> “Lick each other,” he said thickly.
> 
> Obediently, she turned around and straddled Malavi, working her way backward until her cunt was in range of Malavi’s eager tongue. Then she lowered her face into the other woman’s neatly trimmed black curls and sought out the swollen nub. Just as her tongue found it, she felt her own clit explode with sensation as Malavi’s lips and teeth sucked and nipped expertly at it. She moaned, stroking her tongue across Malavi’s hard clit and hearing the other woman cry out with pleasure.
> 
> Snape stood, and when his trousers fell to his ankles he removed them, along with his boxers, and came and knelt down at the foot of the bed.
> 
> “Show me,” he said, gathering up Amanda’s long red hair and sweeping it to one side. She looked up at him, then spread the lips of Malavi’s cunt with her fingers, exposing the engorged button of her clit. Careful not to block his view, she flicked across it with her tongue again and again, feeling it grow even harder as she teased it.
> 
> Snape reached out a long, slender forefinger and slid it inside Malavi’s wet cunt. “Oh, yes,” she cried. “Oh, finger-fuck me, oh, please, yes!” He pushed in two fingers, then three, and Amanda licked and sucked furiously at the swollen clit as he worked his fingers in and out. “Oh, god!” Malavi cried, twisting and writhing underneath her. “Oh, yes, lick my clit! Right there! Oh god, oh please, make me come, make me come, oh yes!” There was a rush of fluid onto Snape’s hand, and she gave a long, shuddering sigh and was still.
> 
> “Now you,” said Snape to Amanda. “Lie down.”
> 
> She got off Malavi, who went down to the foot of the bed and knelt next to Snape. Amanda lay back and beckoned to him. “Up here,” she said, “over my face.”
> 
> “But I want to see her lick your cunt,” he protested.
> 
> “I know,” she said. “Come on, I’ll show you. I  _have_  done this once or twice before.” She grinned.
> 
> He climbed awkwardly onto the bed. He was lean to the point of boniness, but better that than the salad-dodgers they sometimes got in, like that conceited lump Slughorn, she thought. He had left his socks on, and one of his big toes protruded through a rather large hole. She might have found this amusing if her attention had not been focused so intently on the throbbing between her own legs. She guided him so that he was kneeling over her, facing toward her feet, his balls hanging directly over her mouth, and she licked them gently. 
> 
> “Oh, Christ,” he said, and began pumping his cock with his fist. Amanda felt Malavi’s tongue begin to work her clit, and she moaned. She sucked at Snape’s balls, which had tightened and drawn up into their sack. “Oh, god, yes,” he said, stroking harder and faster. 
> 
> Malavi was sucking hard on her clit, and then slid her thumb into Amanda’s cunt, while her forefinger pushed up into her anus. “Oh, fuck, Malavi,” gasped Amanda. “Nobody licks pussy like you do, nobody.”
> 
> She grasped Snape’s buttocks and spread them slightly, then licked in a circle around his anus. The feeling of Malavi’s tongue on her clit, and her fingers working inside her, was so intense that it was hard to concentrate on what she was doing. 
> 
> She probed gently into his anus with her tongue, and when he responded with a groan, she began slipping her tongue in and out as he stroked himself, the three of them keeping the same rhythm. Malavi’s teeth nipped at her clit, and she couldn’t hold off any longer; she came hard and screamed out, her cry muffled by Snape’s arse above her face. At once she felt his balls tense, and he said, “Oh, fuck yes, I’m coming, oh, god, oh fuck, fuck . . . aaaahhh!” and she felt the hot liquid falling in spurts onto her belly. 
> 
> Ah, well, she thought. Maybe next time.


	3. Calm Submissive State

  
Author's notes:

> WARNING: BESTIALITY!!!!!!! It's Sirius Black, folks, so you know where this is going!

* * *

  


* * *

  
It fell to Amber to look after Sirius Black, and she was not especially happy about it. 

It wasn’t the man himself, she thought, as she showed him into the candlelit bedroom. He was nice enough, and quite good-looking. And really, if you came down to it, there was just that one little sentence on his card that put you off.

He reached for her and drew her to him, sliding his hands down her back to her buttocks and kissing her neck. 

“It’ll be all right this time,” he said. “I’ve got it under control, I swear.”

She knew this was not true. He said it every single time, and yet when the moment came, he invariably lost control. And to tell the truth, that didn’t bother her either. It was kind of exciting, really, and certainly not as objectionable as many of the things that clients wanted her to do.

She unbuttoned his shirt and ran her hands over his chest and down his flat belly. “You know I don’t mind, sweetheart,” she murmured softly. 

And truly, she didn’t—especially since he had long ago agreed to a whole list of conditions, which were also written out on the card: No blowjobs. No kissing on the mouth. No scratching. No biting. Plus that one other proviso that she had added after the first time they were together: one condition that was an absolute deal-breaker for her.

She was wearing a simple white T-shirt and jeans, because that’s how he liked his women to dress; and nothing underneath, because that was also how he liked them.

She unbuckled his trousers and slipped her hand down into them. He never wore underwear either—at least not when he came here—and she took his cock in her hand and squeezed it gently. 

“Yes,” he said, and pushed her T-shirt up over her breasts, leaning down to kiss them. His tongue flicked lightly over her nipple, and she sighed and leaned into him.

She couldn’t say that she minded this, either. 

He undressed quickly. He always did this—took a brief time-out to get his kit off—and she waited until he was finished before slowly unzipping her jeans and sliding them down over her hips, then stepping out of them, watching his eyes widen in appreciation.

He reached a hand between her legs, pushing one finger into the cleft between her lips, and she groaned aloud. 

“You like that?” he said, as he always did.

“Oh, babe, yes,” she replied, as she always did. 

It was the truth, too: she  _did_  like it: this was absolutely not the part she didn’t like. His finger flicked across her clit, and she moved against his hand, warming up, hungry for more. “Touch me,” she said, and took hold of his cock again, stroking along the underside of it with her thumb.

He pushed her down on the bed and spread her legs apart, dipping his face between her thighs and sucking her clit into his mouth. She arched up against him and heard his breathing coarsen, felt an exquisite tickling as he moaned against her tender flesh. He was rubbing his cock rhythmically against her leg as he tasted her, and she thought,  _here it comes._

He gave a sudden loud groan, and there was a crackling in the air as he changed: one second he was there between her legs, the tangled curtain of his hair obscuring his face as he licked her—and in the next the man was gone, and in his place a large black dog lapping hungrily at her.

And oh, Christ have mercy, she thought, this was not the bad part either, no, dear god, no: no man on earth had a tongue like that, Jesus and all the angels. It must be six inches long, and quick, the surface a little rough; it felt unbelievably good, nuzzling into her cunt, the nose cold and wet against her pubis and the warm, wet tongue licking, and licking, and licking.

He lifted his head and began to growl low in his throat, and she turned obediently over and got onto all fours and presented her arse to him. 

He was on her in a flash, his forelegs clasped around her and his hips pumping rapidly as he penetrated her over and over again. And she never minded this either, getting fucked hard and fast this way, so different from anyone else. “Come on, fuck me, make me come,” she gasped, and he did, growling and pounding into her like no man she had ever had, and it was good, oh god, it was so good to feel his hot come flooding into her as he thrust against her, and she gave a hoarse cry and her legs trembled underneath her.

Then he was finished; she felt him relax against her, his breath warm against her neck. 

And then came the part she  _did_  hate.

Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes stuck together like a rusty nut and bolt, with his full weight on her until she thought her legs would collapse, and she would go absolutely out of her mind with boredom and discomfort. 

Which was why she had insisted that he agree, in writing, to let her keep a stack of magazines and a bottle of nail varnish by the head of the bed.

 


	4. Froople and Bilch

  
Author's notes: Fred and George go for a twofer  


* * *

 

* * *

>  

>  

> It was unusual for two men to request the simultaneous services of one girl—although Zelda thought, looking at these two fresh-faced redheads, that it would be a stretch, really, to refer to them as “men.” Not that she was worried about the possibility of their being actually underage: the periphery of the Wayward Wand was scrupulously protected by an Age Line.

>   
>   
> She was seated at a small writing table in the sitting-room with two blank parchment cards before her. “Let me see,” she said, pushing her rhinestone-studded reading glasses up on her nose, “Mr—ah—Mertz, and Mr Costanza, is that correct?” 
> 
>   
>   
> Her voice, conditioned by years of professional discretion, betrayed not an iota of her certainty that those were not their true names. If nothing else, they were as alike as if they had drunk from the same flask of Polyjuice Potion; it was simply not possible that they were not related by blood, and closely, too. They were wearing identical clothes, as well: red and yellow knitted scarves, and bulky hand-knitted jumpers against the late December cold, one with a large letter F, and one with a G.
> 
>   
>   
> But that was none of her business—after all, aliases were hardly a rarity in her line of work—and she wrote their names at the top of the cards in her careful script as if there were nothing at all unusual in a pair of identical twin brothers turning up with different surnames.
> 
>   
>   
> “Anything in particular you prefer?” she asked. 
> 
>   
>   
> “A blonde, with serious hooters,” said one, while the other said, at exactly the same moment, “Asian. I do fancy Asian.”
> 
>   
>   
> She peered at them over the tops of her glasses. “Why don’t I just have several girls come out and you can agree on which one you’d like, hm?”
> 
>   
>   
> “All right,” they said in unison.
> 
>   
>   
> She wondered why they were intent on sharing a girl if they didn’t even have the same tastes; since they were obviously brothers, she doubted that they were planning any interaction with each other. Rather the opposite, she imagined. But again, none of her business.
> 
>   
> “We do require payment up-front from first-time clients,” she said, smiling apologetically. And then the mystery was solved, for they brought forth between them a pile of coins and bills in small denominations.
> 
>   
> _Christmas money,_ she thought. _They’ve pooled their Christmas money to buy a whore._
> 
>   
>   
>  It was sweet, really. She gave a little sigh of nostalgia for her own lost youth and innocence, and wrote out their receipt and gave it to George. 
> 
>   
> “You’ll also have to hand over your wands to Hastings, here. Only temporarily, of course—you’ll get them back when you leave.”
> 
>   
> “Our wands?” said Fred in alarm. “We have to give up our wands?”  
>   
> “You did read the House Policies and Procedures, did you not, Mr Mertz? Was there some reason in particular you wanted to keep your wand?” Her tone had grown slightly cooler.
> 
>   
> “It’s just—” said George, “—we’ve never been without them. Since we were eleven.”
> 
>   
> “Well,” she said with a small smile, “I expect there are other things you’ve never done before that you’d like to try out here as well.”
> 
>   
> The two boys exchanged glances. 
> 
>   
> “Right,” said Fred, pulling his wand from underneath his jumper and placing it into Hastings’ outstretched hand. “Here you are then.”
> 
>   
> George followed suit, and Zelda rose from her chair and gathered up the parchment cards.
> 
>   
> “I’ll just be a moment,” she said.
> 
>   
> In the end, they compromised on an olive-skinned brunette named Jasmine wearing a short black leather skirt, red satin blouse, and high, shiny black boots with stiletto heels. As the three of them were leaving the sitting room, she turned around and flashed eight fingers at Zelda, who grinned, shook her head, and flashed ten and then another five.
> 
>   
> Jasmine led Fred and George into a dimly-lit room, and gestured toward the enormous bed at the center. “Make yourselves comfortable, boys,” she said in a throaty contralto.
> 
>   
> They plopped themselves down obediently on the end of the bed, and she stood facing them and began slowly to unbutton her blouse, swaying slightly and gazing smokily at them from beneath thick dark lashes.
> 
>   
> “Oh, bloody hell,” breathed George. “Happy Christmas to us.”
> 
>   
> “Happy fucking Christmas is right,” said Fred in a strangled voice, as the blouse came off to reveal the skimpiest of brassieres, filled to overflowing with a pair of luscious, full, perfect breasts whose dark nipples could just barely be seen peeking above the curves of black lace.
> 
>   
> She propped one foot on a chair, the brief skirt hiking up tantalizingly to reveal a flash of black silk knickers, and unzipped one boot and removed it. Then the other came off, and she turned her back to them, bending over and sliding the skirt up her hips to give them a good look at her rounded arse and the satiny black crotch of her knickers. 
> 
>   
> “Oh, Merlin,” said Fred, awe-stricken, “this is the best Christmas ever.”
> 
>   
> She stepped out of the leather skirt, leaving it in a little puddle on the floor, and unhooked the front clasp of the bra and shrugged it off behind her. Her nipples pointed slightly upward, large and dark brown.
> 
>   
> “Tits,” said George in a hushed voice. “Fuck me, tits.”
> 
>   
> “Two of them,” said Fred. 
> 
>   
> Hooking her thumbs in the elastic of her knickers, she lowered the scrap of silk slowly, ever so slowly, until it, too, was on the floor, and she was standing before them wearing nothing but a diamond stud in her navel and a small dragon tattoo over her left hipbone.
> 
>   
> “Cat got your tongue, boys?” she asked finally.
> 
>   
> “You’re just—well, you haven’t got any clothes on, is the thing,” said George.
> 
>   
> “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a woman naked before, a good-looking pair of lads like yourselves.”
> 
>   
> “Seen, yes, but not, you know, to look at and all,” said Fred. “It’s a bit, er, crowded where we live.”
> 
>   
> “Yeah, and you’d have to be mad to try and sneak a girl upstairs past our m—ouch!” George rubbed his side where Fred had elbowed him.
> 
>   
> “Well, look all you want, boys,” she purred, coming closer. “And you know, you’re allowed to touch, too.”
> 
>   
> Fred reached out and tentatively took one breast in his hand, hefting its weight gently and brushing the nipple with his thumb.
> 
>   
> “Fuck me,” he said reverently, “there  _is_ a God.”
> 
>   
> “So,” she said, “were you planning to keep your clothes on the whole time, or would you like to get a bit more comfortable?”
> 
>   
> “No! Yes!” They jumped to their feet and began hastily unbuttoning and unbuckling. George tried to yank his trousers off without first taking off his shoes, and fell backwards onto the bed; Fred hopped about first on one foot and then the other, trying to remove everything one side at a time. Within a few seconds, their clothes lay in two heaps on the floor. 
> 
>   
> They were exactly alike, with a scattering of freckles over the pale skin of their shoulders; lean, nearly hairless bodies; and two almost vertical erections sprouting from identical patches of dark ginger hair.
> 
>   
> “Ah, it’s grand to be young,” said Jasmine, taking a cock in either hand. “Now, who’s going to go first?”
> 
>   
> “First?” said Fred, and the two looked at each other. 
> 
>   
> “Toss a coin?” said George.
> 
>   
> “What, and one of us take seconds? That’s disgusting.”
> 
>   
> Clearly they had neglected to talk this through beforehand.
> 
>   
> “Tell you what,” said Jasmine, “I usually charge extra for this, but seeing as you’re new clients I could make an exception. I’ll do you both at the same time.”
> 
>   
> “Erm . . . how would that work exactly?” said George.
> 
>   
> “No crossing of swords!” said Fred. “We agreed, remember! There must be absolutely no crossing of swords!”
> 
>   
> She laughed. “Settle down,” she said. “It’s simple, I’ll show you. You,” she said to George. “Lie back on the bed, here.”
> 
>   
> She took a bottle from the bedside table and poured a thin stream of liquid over his erect cock, then spread it with her fingertips.
> 
>   
> “Oh, holy shit,” he said, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “What is that? That feels bloody marvelous, it’s like, hot and cold at the same time.”
> 
>   
> She straddled him, and eased down onto his cock. “Oh, god,” he said. “Oh my fucking god.”
> 
>   
> Twisting round, she handed the bottle to Fred. “Now you,” she said. “Get on your knees, and come in the back door. Easy does it, and don’t spare the lube.”
> 
>   
> “The back door?” he cried. “Why have I got to be the one to come in the back door?”
> 
>   
> “Fred, for Christ’s sake, will you just fuck the woman?”
> 
>   
> “Not in the arse, I won’t! I mean, does that even count?”
> 
>   
> “Oh, Merlin’s wrinkled foreskin,” said George, rolling his eyes. “Get down here. If you won’t come in the back door, I will. Excuse us, miss.”
> 
>   
> They changed places, and Fred settled in underneath Jasmine with a blissful sigh. On his knees behind her, George examined the little bottle of fluid.
> 
>   
> “I’ve got to find out where this comes from,” he said. “This is the most amazing fucking stuff I’ve ever had on my dick.”
> 
>   
> Now it was Fred’s turn to be exasperated. “For fuck’s sake, George, can you worry about that later?”
> 
>   
> Ignoring him, George peered at the label. “Froople and Bilch, Chemists, Manchester,” he said bemusedly. “Never heard of them.”
> 
>   
> “George!”
> 
>   
> “Oh. Right.” Splashing a liberal amount of the liquid about, he eased himself into her anus and gave a long groaning sigh.
> 
>   
> “Now,” she said, “you two hold still and let me do the work, else you’ll bollocks up the rhythm.” She began moving forward and back, slowly at first, and then faster and faster.
> 
>  
> 
> “Oh, fuck fuck fuck FUCK!” said Fred, arching up beneath her. George gave a choked cry and thrust forward one last time, collapsing on top of her.
> 
>   
> “Get off, man!” said Fred. “Or at least prop yourself up, a bloke can’t breathe under here!”
> 
>   
> Sandwiched in between them, Jasmine sneaked a glance at the clock on the bedside table. Eleven minutes all told. “Split the difference, Zel,” she said with a little smile, but neither of the boys was listening.
> 
>   
> Out on the street, Fred turned to George and said, “No need to do that again, I think.”
> 
>   
> “Mmm,” George agreed. He was examining the label of the little bottle.
> 
>   
> “Don’t tell me you nicked the lube!”
> 
>   
> “Not nicked it, exactly, just swapped it. Besides, it’s almost empty.”
> 
>   
> “Swapped it? For what? You brought lube with you?”
> 
>   
> George grinned. “I always come prepared.”
> 
>   
> “You don’t think they’ll know it’s not the same stuff?”
> 
>   
> “Oh, they’ll know. Let’s just say that the next bloke who uses that room will have a whole new answer to the question, ‘Do you smoke after sex?’”

 

  



	5. Blonds have more fun

  
Author's notes:

> Apparently, it stands for Snape & Malfoy. Who knew? 

* * *

> * * *

> Bruce paused outside the door to the room. “You’ll be waiting?” he asked Carrie. “I’ll knock when it’s time.”

>   
> “Yeah,” she said, and shook her head. “You always look fucking strange in that getup, I must say.”
> 
> He grinned. “All in a day’s work, love. At least I’m not the one who has to suck his cock.”
> 
> “Touché,” she said, laughing. “Fuck off in there, then.”
> 
> He glanced at the card one last time. 
> 
> “What are you looking at that for?” she scoffed. “You and me must have done this bloke dozens of times. I bet you could do him in your sleep. I know I could.”
> 
> He sniffed disapprovingly and adjusted his wig. “You do as you like,” he said. “But it takes me an hour to get ready for this toerag, and I’m not going to mess it up at the last minute by forgetting the rules.”
> 
> “Talking of forgetting the rules,” she said, “you better not let Zelda hear you refer to a paying customer as a toerag.”
> 
> “Right, whatever,” he said, skimming over the notes scribbled on the card—which, in addition to a detailed description and sketch of the costume, included the notations  _Sub: severe (bad rot. cuff, no strpdo)_  and  _Absolutely NO talking._ And then at the bottom:  _SW: cheese soufflé. Wife also client. Discretn imperative! IMPORTANT: Don’t touch Mark!!!!!!_  
> 
> He shot his cuffs, straightened his shoulders, and entered the room. 
> 
> The man was naked, except for a silver mask covering his entire face.  _As if I don’t know who you are, you great nit, think you’re so much better than us._ His arms were held out to his sides, parallel to the floor, suspended from the ceiling by chains fastened to the leather cuffs around his wrists; his legs were forced apart at the ankles by a three-foot iron bar. His pale, naked body was shiny with sweat, the smooth perfection of his skin marred only by a tracery of threadlike scars over his torso and thighs. The hair around the base of his flaccid penis was silver-blond, and on the inside of his left forearm there was a snake-and-skull tattoo in faded black ink.
> 
> Bruce picked out a black leather flogger from the rack by the door, and drew the knotted tails through his fingers before advancing on his cowering client. _You’re still soft,_ thought Bruce.  _Must do something about that. Let’s get this show on the road, then._  He flicked gently at the man’s crotch with the whip, and was rewarded with a low grunt and a barely perceptible stiffening of the member. Then he lashed the whip wickedly across the man’s smooth, hairless chest, and saw him jerk back in surprise.
> 
> _That’s right. Every time you make a sound, you’ll be punished. If I can’t talk, then neither, by god, will you._  He struck the man with the whip again, this time with a little less force, and observed with satisfaction that his cock was swelling noticeably. 
> 
> He moved around behind the man—in part to get that disturbing mask out of his field of vision—and began flogging him in earnest, lashing him across the back and buttocks with the knotted leather strands of the whip. Each time the man groaned aloud, Bruce delivered him a particularly vicious cut, the knots leaving tiny red dots on the smooth skin. 
> 
> It was warm in the room— _can’t have the clients’ dicks shriveling up from the cold_  —and he was starting to work up a sweat. He unfastened the buttons on the wool coat and pulled it off, crossing the room to hang it on a hook by the door. Approaching the man again, he put on his best menacing look and rolled up his shirtsleeves, revealing a snake-and-skull figure identical to the one on the blond man’s forearm. 
> 
> “Please,” said the man, and Bruce cut him cruelly across the abdomen with the whip.  _Shut up, you big chicken._ His cock looked fully erect now; Bruce prodded it with the blunt handle of the whip to see if it was well and truly hard.  _Almost there,_  he thought, and returned to his position behind the man, really laying into him now, putting his back into it, swinging forward from his hips with every stroke. The whip made a satisfying  _swish_ and  _thwack_ followed each time by a sharp hissed exhalation of breath from the blond man. 
> 
> Time to check the erection-o-meter again, this time with a fully positive result:  _that’s three and a half inches of blue steel, that is._ He noted with approval the tears leaking out from under the silver mask and dripping onto the man’s red-streaked chest.  _l bet that salt stings a bit,_  he thought.  _Good._  
> 
> He walked over to the door and tapped twice on it with the handle of the whip; it opened instantly and Carrie entered, dressed in a glossy black catsuit. Replacing the whip in the rack, he withdrew a long rattan cane, and followed Carrie back to the center of the room. 
> 
> She dropped to her knees and grasped the man’s balls in one shiny black-gloved hand, squeezing and twisting them. He groaned, and Bruce rewarded him with a swift cut across the arse with the cane, leaving an impressive red weal on the buttocks.
> 
> “Suck me,” the man whispered. “Oh, please, suck me,” and Bruce hit him again, harder this time, the cane singing through the air and striking his buttocks with a sharp  _crack!_ A tiny thread of blood appeared along the welt, which was just fine: this client didn’t think he’d got his considerable money’s worth if he didn’t need a visit from the house Mediwitch before dressing to go home.
> 
> Carrie lowered her mouth onto his cock, bracing her hands against his thighs to avoid being pushed backward as his hips jerked forward with every blow of the cane. 
> 
> The man was sobbing now, his voice muffled behind the silver mask. “Yes, please, yes!” he cried, and Carrie worked his cock with her lips and tongue while Bruce scourged him mercilessly, the cane whistling through the air and drawing blood with every stroke.
> 
> “Stop!”
> 
> The man’s demeanor had changed, and his voice, which only a moment ago had been sobbing and pleading, now rang out with authority.
> 
> “Stop this instant!”
> 
> This had never happened before. Carrie drew back, letting the deflating member fall from her mouth, and looked up at Bruce, who shook his head and put his weight into the next blow. Whsshh, crack! and the man jerked forward. His penis, however, had wilted completely.
> 
> “Stop, you idiots! Eggs Benedict! Release me at once!”
> 
> _Whsshh, crack!_
> 
> The man seemed genuinely angry now. “Parmesan frittata! Scrambled eggs! You fucking morons, I’ll have your jobs for this!”
> 
> “Bruce,” said Carrie tentatively, “Perhaps we should—”
> 
> He shook his head and raised his arm for the next blow.  _This is what comes of not looking over the cards every time, you lazy bint._ Whsshh, crack!
> 
> “Cheese soufflé, you misbegotten thick-headed Mudblood whores! Cheese soufflé!”
> 
> Ah, there it was. Bruce dropped the cane and reached up immediately to unfasten the buckles on the leather cuffs. As soon as his hands were free, the man drew back his right arm and struck Bruce across the face with enough force to make him stagger backwards. “You ignorant cunt!” he roared, and Bruce saw that the snake-and-skull tattoo on his forearm, which before had been faint and blurred, was now a vivid and pulsing black, and the skin around it an angry red. “Bring me my clothes!” he demanded.
> 
> And to Carrie, who had knelt at his feet and unfastened the spreader bar, “Fetch me my wand at once!”
> 
> “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “but you’ll need to collect that from Hastings on your way out.” She rose and backed away from him, but not quickly enough to escape a vicious blow to the side of her head.
> 
> “Stupid fucking cunts, the pair of you.”
> 
> He began pulling on his clothes, and Bruce said, “I’ll send in the Mediwitch, sir, if you’ll wait just a moment.”
> 
> “Sod the sodding Mediwitch!” He shoved his bare feet into his shoes. At the door, he paused and turned to Bruce. “By the way,” he said contemptuously, “that outfit’s pathetic. Wouldn’t fool an infant.” And he strode out of the room, shirttails flapping behind him.
> 
> “That little performance,” said Bruce, rubbing his jaw, “is going to cost him well into the double digits.”
> 
> “Where’s that card?” said Carrie. “I’m promoting him to five pricks right now.”
> 
> “Add one, why don’t you? He can be our first six-prick client.”
> 
> She gathered up the equipment and returned it to the rack, and Bruce dragged the black wig from his head. 
> 
> “Phew! I’m sweating like a racehorse!”
> 
> “No shit,” said Carrie. “I’ve got to get out of this sauna suit and into the shower.” 
> 
> Bruce withdrew a small contact lens case from the pocket of his trousers, carefully removed the black lenses from his eyes, and dropped them into the solution. “Just keep thinking about the money,” he said cheerfully. “It’s all about the money.”  
> 


	6. Water Wings

  
Author's notes:

> He's baaack!

* * *

> Malavi ran a hand over her small, perfect, brown-peaked breasts and thought,  _what the fuck._
> 
> First of all, the client had asked for her by name—well, by description anyway—and he was notoriously someone who didn’t give a toss who did him. He always just took whoever was available at the time, sat back, and watched intently while she sucked him off. Except of course for that one time a while back when she and Amanda had doubled up for him, which he seemed to enjoy quite a lot. And since the card she was looking at said, “definitely a tit man,” she was at a loss to imagine why, if he was going to ask for a particular girl, he had requested her instead of Amanda, who was certainly more generously endowed in that area.
> 
> “What the fuck” number two was this business about the pool. The Wayward Wand had a modest spa area which included a small indoor swimming pool, and he had apparently requested to have his session there, instead of in one of the bedrooms. What the fuck.
> 
> And one further “what the fuck” was that Bruce wanted her to bring back some sort of souvenir. “Hair, a toenail clipping, anything,” he had said, as soon as he saw the card in her hand. And then, when she raised her eyebrows and shot him a look, “No, not  _that._  Anything else, though. Really.”
> 
> “What the fuck, Bruce,” she had said. “You do know that we work in a whorehouse, not a beauty salon, don’t you?” She was preoccupied just now with her own inability to swim, and so had little interest in trophy-hunting for that tiresome git Bruce, especially since he steadfastly refused to say why he wanted the toenail leavings of a client he had never even met. He had offered her ten Galleons, which normally would have been enough to get her attention, but she was too busy just at the moment wondering whether a pair of water wings would be too much of a boner-killer. Besides, there was the jar with the fifty-five Galleons, which by god she meant to have, so fuck Bruce and his fucking ten-Galleon toenail.
> 
> After some thought, she pulled a long diaphanous white negligee from her closet and slipped it on. Many of her things were white, a color that showed off her dark skin to advantage. Not that it mattered, probably, since this particular client seemed immune to the charms of seductive lingerie and preferred that the girl strip off as quickly as possible. But the swimming-pool angle was new, so there was no telling, and white had the added benefit of going transparent when wet. 
> 
> One other logistical problem—besides of course the insignificant little fact that she might  _drown—_ had been where to hide the lube. It wasn’t as if any of her working clothes had pockets, after all, and there was no poolside table conveniently stocked with an assortment of F&B products. And even if there had been, what if he expected to fuck her out in the middle of the fucking _water_  . . . although, come to think of it, that was hardly likely, him being the famously unfuckable potions bloke.
> 
> Zelda had come to her rescue with a little jar of time-release beads that could be inserted beforehand. “Hoist on his own petard,” she said, with a little chuckle. “Not to say I think you’ll succeed where so many others have failed, dear, but best of luck.”
> 
> Something was definitely up. Snape seemed more impatient than usual—or perhaps it was just that he wasn’t maintaining his usual façade of nonchalant indifference. He was in shirtsleeves, having apparently left his habitual frock coat in the anteroom. She walked ahead of him to show him the way to the spa, swaying deliberately and giving him a good look at her lovely, translucently-clad arse.
> 
> He removed his shoes and socks, and placed them on the low shelf just inside the door, then turned to her and began pulling open the little ribbons that fastened the negligee down the front. “Let’s get this off you, shall we?” he said huskily. “I want you in the water.”
> 
> “I can’t swim,” she said. 
> 
> He seemed taken aback for a second. “Are you afraid to go in the water?” 
> 
> “Not of going in the water, no, just the, you know, drowning bit at the end.”
> 
> “We can stay in the shallow part. No drowning necessary.” He had pushed the negligee back over her shoulders and was running his hands down her body. 
> 
> Saying “we,” must mean that he was planning to come in with her, so she began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. This was not going to be the usual straightforward blowjob, apparently. He let her undress him, reaching behind her to run his fingers through her long black hair while she unbuttoned his shirt and unfastened his trousers. His hands on her were surprisingly gentle, stroking the back of her neck and lifting her hair to rub it against his face. She scraped her nails lightly down his chest and then hooked her thumbs into the waistband of his trousers, pushing them down past his hips and letting them fall to the floor. He stepped out of them and drew her to him, bending down to touch his lips to the hollow of her throat while his arms tightened around her.
> 
> She could feel the hardness of his cock against her belly. He was wearing black boxers, and she slid her hands inside them, grasping his arse and grinding her pelvis against him.  _So much for “no touching of the body,”_  she thought.  _Zelda should just tear up that whole fucking card._
> 
> He stripped off the boxers and clasped her to him, pressing the length of his erection against her abdomen. “So soft,” he murmured, his voice muffled by her hair. Malavi reached down and cupped his balls in her hand, stroking behind them gently in a come-hither motion. 
> 
> He groaned softly, and she said, still stroking persuasively, “Want to fuck me in the pool, then?”
> 
> He immediately laid a finger across her lips and said, “Shhh. No talking.”
> 
> _Well, cross another thing off that fucking useless card,_ she thought, and slid her hand up around his cock.
> 
> He reached down and lifted her up so that she could wrap her legs about his waist, then carried her over to the pool and stepped down into it. He was still wearing his shirt, which was open at the front, and he stopped short of the point where his shirttail would have touched the water, lifting her gently off him and setting her down into the pool. Then he stood watching her silently while he removed his cufflinks and finished taking off his shirt. She lowered herself into the water, leaning back and shaking her hair loose so that it flowed out around her in an inky cloud.
> 
> Snape stepped back out of the pool and picked his boxers and trousers up from the tiled floor. He folded them, and his shirt, and laid all three garments on a chaise longue, setting the cufflinks carefully on top of the folded shirt. These activities afforded Malavi a generous look at his naked arse—which was, she noted, exceptionally fine. In fact, Snape was a man who looked altogether better with his clothes off than with them on. His attenuated body, its pallor in stark contrast to his black hair, would not have looked out of place in an El Greco painting. The corded muscles of his back and legs shifted as he bent forward to place the clothes on the chair, and Malavi was suddenly aware of the cool water touching her all over. She reached between her legs and parted her lips to admit it further, fingering herself gently and realizing that if things continued in this vein, the little time-release beads might prove quite redundant.
> 
> He stepped into the pool again, leaning back against the side at a point where the water came just to the tops of his thighs, and waited for her to come to him. She took her time, gliding slowly through the pool, her hair trailing out behind her and her eyes never leaving his, feeling the coolness slip between her legs as she moved. 
> 
> “Suck me,” he said without preamble, and reached for her.
> 
> She took the head of his cock in her mouth and ran her tongue around it, pushing the foreskin down, flicking back and forth against the underside where the head met the shaft. 
> 
> “Oh, yes,” he said, cupping the back of her head in one hand and pushing her gently forward. “Oh, god yes.”
> 
> The water lifted her up, leaving her hands free to explore, to tease through the black curls around the base of his cock, to slide up into the cleft between his buttocks . . . and to return to her own body, slipping in between her legs even as she worked her mouth down his cock, taking it deeper and deeper and making him groan out loud.
> 
> The cool water had made his balls draw up tight against him, and she stroked them with her left hand, pinching the skin lightly over and over again between thumb and forefinger, feeling his cock pulse in her mouth and her clit swell and harden under the fingers of her right hand. Jesus Christ, she wanted to fuck him.
> 
> “Oh, fuck,” he said, closing his eyes. “Oh, fucking Christ, fucking shit  _fuck.”_
> 
> She pressed her crotch up against his knee and ground shamelessly against him, opening her throat and taking his cock as far as it would go, breathing in the sharp smoky odor of him mixed with the chlorine of the pool. She was close, so close, and she could taste that he was, too, and she was conscious only of her desperation to have him inside her when she released him from her mouth and scrambled upward, determined to impale herself on him, to feel that cock inside of her, to bear down on him and find her release.
> 
> But it was too late. Even as he left her mouth he was starting to come, and with a hoarse cry he threw his head back and grasped his cock in his fist and pumped out one jet of semen after another, hot and sticky between her belly and his.
> 
> She turned her face up to his. “Please,” she said. “Please.” 
> 
> He looked silently at her, breathing heavily.
> 
> “Make me come,” she said. “Please.”
> 
> He turned her around and held her in front of him, one arm under her breasts, then lowered himself into the water until she was floating between his spread knees, her head leaned back against his shoulder. He reached one long finger between her legs and began circling it over her clit, gently at first, and then harder as she bucked and writhed under his hand. “Oh god,” she said, “there, right there, oh please, more, harder, yes, oh god oh god oh god YES!” 
> 
> And then she clutched his wrist abruptly in a gesture that said, no more.
> 
> She didn’t remember the jar with the fifty-five Galleons in it until she was dressed and dry and lying exhausted on her bed. Foiled again, she thought with a little laugh . . . and then realized that there were ten Galleons at least that she by the gods  _could_ have, and took a pair of scissors and snipped a small lock off her still-damp hair and tied it with a piece of thread.
> 
> Because what Bruce didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

>  

* * *

>  


	7. The Big Easy

  
Author's notes:

> Good things come in small, erm, packages.

* * *

 

> Amber stuck her head into Vidalia’s dressing room.
> 
>  
> 
> “Hoops is here for you.” 
> 
>  
> 
> She had that look on her face, the one that said  _better you than me._  
> 
>  
> 
> If there was one thing that mystified the staff at The Wayward Wand more than Filius Flitwick’s preference for Vidalia, it was that she seemed just fine with it. Quite pleased with it, in fact. Well, that, and her bizarre—some might even say unkind—way of referring to him. It had started out as “my little b-ball player” but soon devolved into the one-syllable nickname, and now everyone used it, although never to his face.
> 
>  
> 
> Vidalia slipped her feet into a pair of outsized pink mules and picked up an enormous matching feather boa.
> 
>  
> 
> “Isn’t it a bit . . . strange?” Amber couldn’t resist asking her. “I mean, he’s so, he’s just so . . . tiny.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Huh. Strange. Ain’t you the one fucks the dog-man? Don’t go talking to me ‘bout no strange.” She rose from her chair and swept the boa regally over one shoulder.
> 
>  
> 
> Even without the mules, she would have stood a full head and shoulders over Amber; as it was, if the smaller woman had moved any closer she would have risked suffocation. 
> 
>  
> 
> “Come on,” said Amber, not in the least intimidated by the pair of satin-upholstered torpedoes staring her in the face. “How do you even know when it’s in?”
> 
>  
> 
> Vidalia raised a plucked eyebrow. “Not everything built to scale, baby girl,” she said with a slow grin. “That man like a little tripod. You look at the way his britches fit. What you think, that one a his legs just bigger around than the other?”
> 
>  
> 
> “If you say so. I still think you may squash him by accident one of these days.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Wouldn’t be the first time. This a dangerous ass, girl; crush a man like a maypop, he don’t behave his self.”
> 
>  
> 
> Amber laughed. Vidalia liked her: she had a ready sense of humor and a good work ethic. The kind of girl she would have hired in a New York minute back when she was running her own place, back when she had a clientele to serve.
> 
>  
> 
> She shook her head. Ten years, even five years ago, half the wizards in America had lived in Louisiana, most of them in New Orleans. It was far and away the most magic-drenched city in the US, with a nightlife unmatched anywhere. And La Bergère Plantureuse was right in the heart of it all, with a staff of forty girls and something for every taste. Money had flowed like liquor, and liquor had flowed like water, and Vidalia’s little black book had held the names of every powerful wizard—and not a few witches—east  _or_ west of the Mississippi.
> 
>  
> 
> And then, in the early nineties, New Orleans’ magical population began to move away. Some left for England, some for Canada, and a few for Australia. Many of the old Creole wizarding families moved to France. 
> 
>  
> 
> No one would tell Vidalia why they were going. They gave vague, evasive answers and would not meet her eyes; it was always some nebulous business opportunity or family obligation. Vidalia, who could smell bullshit a mile away, never pressed them for details, but watched with a sense of helpless frustration as her business dwindled away. By early 1994 she had laid off three-quarters of her staff, and couldn’t put off the decision any longer: in August she gave one last all-night party, and then closed her doors for the last time. 
> 
>  
> 
> Chretien Bajolière was a long-time client and one of the few who still lived in New Orleans. He took Vidalia aside and said, “Honey, you need to leave town. There’s something bad coming for New Orleans, and you don’t want to be here when it does.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Something bad like what?”
> 
>  
> 
> “I don’t know. But every sign there is has been saying the new millennium’s going to be mighty bad for this town. You need to get gone.”
> 
>  
> 
> “What about you then? You still here.”
> 
>  
> 
> He smiled sadly. “Sugarfoot, my family’s been here for three hundred years. If New Orleans goes down, I’ll go down with her.”
> 
>  
> 
> So she had sold the property to an eager young restaurateur and come to London with half a million in silver in her bank account and no particular plan of action.
> 
>  
> 
> At first it had been fine. She loved the city: the high-class accents, the sense of history everywhere, and the fact that for the most part people left you alone and didn’t get all up in your grill. That was real different from Louisiana, where anybody’s business was everybody’s business, and all your neighbors knew your whole family and how long they’d lived there and whether your momma and daddy had been married for nine months by the time you were born.
> 
>  
> 
> Within a few months, though, two things happened. The first was that she began to be concerned about her money supply. She could not have run La Bergère Plantureuse without a first-rate head for numbers, and she soon realized that at the present rate she would run out of funds in about ten years—and that only if the exchange rate held. 
> 
>  
> 
> The second was quite simply that she grew bored and restless. She had been working since the age of fifteen, and wasn’t used to so much leisure time. So when she heard that Zelda had an opening, she had applied; and Zelda, though skeptical, had taken her on and been surprised and pleased at the result. Apparently a big bodacious thunder-thighed witch with an accent like molasses was right up some British wizards’ alley.
> 
>  
> 
> “Tripod or no tripod,” said Amber, bringing her sharply back to the present, “I don’t see how he gets any  _leverage.”_
> 
>  
> 
> “What you talking about, leverage? He don’t need no leverage—think about it, girl! You lying down, he standing up, and everything  _right there._  Got his hands right where you want, no reaching, no stretching, right  _there_  I tell you. That man a little fucking, fingering, woman-pleasing ma- _chine,_ make you want to slap your momma.”
> 
>  
> 
> “That good, huh?”
> 
>  
> 
> “That good, baby. And sweet? They don’t make ’em any more gentlemanlike.”
> 
>  
> 
> They had come to the door of the sitting room, and Amber lowered her voice. “So why do you make fun of him?”
> 
>  
> 
> “What make fun of him? I don’t make fun of him. He a nice man, always welcome in my book.”
> 
>  
> 
> “Calling him ‘Hoops.’ He can’t help how short he is.”
> 
>  
> 
> There was a brief pause, and then Vidalia threw back her head and laughed. “Got nothing to do with how tall he is.”
> 
>  
> 
> “What then?”
> 
>  
> 
> Vidalia lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think it’s ’cause he got nowhere to keep it, he so little. But he start leaking come as soon as he get hard.”
> 
>  
> 
> “So? What’s that got to do with basketball?”
> 
>  
> 
> She grinned. “Dribbles some before he shoots.”
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  

 


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